


Slipping

by mayoho



Series: ASOUE Drabbles [8]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Anxiety, Canonical Character Death, Character Death Is Not Graphic, Disguise, Drabble, Fourtune Telling, Gen, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 11:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20907257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayoho/pseuds/mayoho
Summary: Three vaguely related drabbles about Olivia Caliban and her work as Madame Lulu.





	Slipping

Olivia’s dropped the turban and the accent, but doesn’t feel anymore herself. Herself is a slippery thing she allowed to escape her grasp. 

Olivia maintains pretenses even around those who know, but she can’t stand the annoyed crinkle of Jacques’s eyebrow. Her hair tickles her back uncomfortably. 

“My siblings trust you,” the ‘I wouldn’t be here otherwise’ hangs unspoken and untrue between them. 

Olivia fiddles with the tea set, the sugar bowl neither of them will use. “They don’t,” she says, so soft, hoping he doesn’t hear. 

Jacques sighs.

Olivia passes him a tea cup, not letting their fingers touch.

* * *

He looks so sad. Lonely and crumpling. There is nothing Olivia can do. She lets him prepare the tea even though Madame Lulu would not.

When he sits, the fingers he spreads over her tablecloth are stained with ash or ink, she couldn’t guess which. Her words catch in her throat; Lemony had always been so careful to look tidy. What has become of them?

“Madame Lulu must be paid, the crystal ball does not do its work for free, please.”

“I haven’t any money,” he says evenly. They’ve had this exchange before. 

“Information will do just fine, my dear.”

* * *

This is more than she deserves. Olivia flails futilely nonetheless. The three children turn away in horror. It’s wise of them; they do not need to see this gruesome sight unfold. 

She has betrayed them all, not just the Baudelaire orphans. Their parents, dead and gone but not how or when most think. The Snicket siblings, who still struggle against the inevitable and unstoppable crumbling of their world. 

The last thing she sees is like a premonition: Lemony, searching the edges of the pit, scribbling in his commonplace book, face carefully blank even though no one is there to see.

**Author's Note:**

> I have so many works in progress for this fandom and I wrote something entirely new instead... at least I wrote something!!
> 
> I was really interested in how Olivia and Jacques, who I don't think it strictly uncompromising in having the moral high ground at all times but has a need to think of himself as someone who does, would interact and then the other two just happened.


End file.
